The true magic

of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.

Michael Chabon. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

How does a project mature?

It is obviously a most mysterious,
imperceptible process.
It carries on independently of ourselves,
in the subconscious,
crystallizing on the walls of the soul.
It is the form of the soul
that makes it unique,
indeed only the soul decides
the hidden 'gestation period' of that image
which cannot be perceived
by the conscious gaze.

Andrej Tarkovsky

This is just to say

I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold This is just to say.William Carlos Williams.

She wondered: How could people

respond to these images if images didn't secretly enjoy the same status as real things? Not that images were so powerful, but that the world was so weak. It could be read, certainly, in its weakness, as on days when the sun baked fallen apples in orchards and the valley smelled like cider, and cold nights when Jordan had driven Chadds Ford for dinner and the tires of her Chevrolet had crunched on the gravel driveway; but the world was fungible only as images. Nothing got inside the head without becoming pictures.

Jonathan Franzen.The Corrections.

leaving things in books

library book return.

bookmarks for other people to find.

mentos gum wrapper in 'The Ballad of the Sad Cafe'.

from the author of persepolis

Marjane Satrapi. Embroideries.

aesthetic immorality

The way his plump hand clutched at her hip seemed somehow improper; not morally, aesthetically.

Truman Capote. Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories.

untitled

She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence.

Zadie Smith. The Autograph Man.

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his eyes were naturally heavy, he had an air of having wallowed, fully dressed, all day, on an unmade bed

The Secret Agent. Joseph Conrad.

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I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.

Great Expectations. Charles Dickens.

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What it was least possible to get rid of was the cruel idea that whatever I had seen Miles and Flora saw more - things terrible and unguessable

The Turn of the Screw. Henry James.

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Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected to be pretty and well dressed till we drop...

The House of Mirth.Edith Wharton.

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The Arcade of the Pont Neuf is not a place for a stroll.

You take it to make a short cut, to gain a few minutes. It is traversed by busy

people whose sole aim is to go quick and straight before them. You see
apprentices there in their working-aprons, work-girls taking home their
work, persons of both sexes with parcels under their arms. There are
also old men who drag themselves forward in the sad gloaming that falls
from the glazed roof, and bands of small children who come to the arcade
on leaving school, to make a noise by stamping their feet on the tiles
as they run along. Throughout the day a sharp hurried ring of footsteps,
resounds on the stone with irritating irregularity. Nobody speaks,
nobody stays there, all hurry about their business with bent heads,
stepping out rapidly, without taking a single glance at the shops. The
tradesmen observe with an air of alarm, the passers-by who by a miracle
stop before their windows.

Therese Raquin. Emile Zola.

When I look at small things,

I think I shall go on living: drops of rain, leather gloves shrunk by being wet...When I look at something too big, I want to die: the Diet Building, or a map of the world...

Abe Kobo.The Box Man: A Novel.

The loves we share with a city

are often secret loves. Old walled towns like Paris, Prague, and even Florence are closed in on themselves and hence limit the world that belongs to them. But Algiers (together with certain other privileged places such as cities on the sea) opens to the sky like a mouth or a wound. In Algiers one loves the commonplace: the sea at the end of every street, a certain volume of sunlight, the beauty of the race. And, as always, in that unashamed offering there is a secret fragrance. In Paris it is possible to be homesick for space and a beating of wings. Here, at least, man is gratified in every wish, and, sure of his desires, can at last measure his possessions.

Probably one has to live in Algiers for some time in order to realize how paralysing an excess of nature's bounty can be. There is nothing here for whoever would learn, educate himself, or better himself. This country has no lessons to teach. It neither promises nor affords glimpses. It is satisfied to give, but in abundance. It is completely accessible to the eyes, and you know it the moment you enjoy it. Its pleasures are without remedy and its joys without hope.

Summer in Algiers. Albert Camus.

There is a type of person

who has a quality about him that sets him apart from other and more ordinary human beings. Such a person has an instinct which is usually found only in small children, an instinct to establish immediate and vital contact between himself and all things in the world.

The Ballad of the Sad Café. Carson McCullers.